Media coverage obsessively focuses on homicides, which are at historical lows. Meanwhile, suicides and overdoses skyrocket, quietly driving record declines in American life expectancy.

Americans think that homicides drive untimely death, a belief likely fueled by disproportionate news coverage of violence. A recent analysis of New York Times coverage found that in 2016, homicides and terrorism comprised more than half of the newspaper’s coverage of death. Similarly, coverage of the deadliest mass shootings typically dominate the headlines for about six days.

On Aug. 8, Ali Watkins of the Times claimed that shootings spiked in North Brooklyn. But according to NYPD data, although shootings in North Brooklyn were up 10 percent this year compared to 2018, when Watkins wrote the article they were down about 27 percent in South Brooklyn, indicating an overall decline in shootings across the borough.

News coverage of American mortality is not aligned with this reality, perhaps because homicides offer a story of conflict that can be easily dramatized and “solved,” where individuals are solely responsible for interpersonal violence (and are typicallyblamed for it, despite evidence linking homicides to structural racism). Within this framing, the “solution” to violence is always arrest and incarceration: taking “violent people” off our streets.

The more than 70,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017 represent a 9.6 percent increase in the overdose death rate from 2016, making them a leading cause of death in America. Overdoses overlap significantly with suicides; an analysis of data from the past 13 years suggests that between 20 and 30 percent of opioid overdose deaths are suicides. As is the case with suicides, poverty and health inequity are major drivers of drug overdose deaths.

Ultimately, inequality and lack of material security drive America’s rapidly increasing rates of depression, which causes tens of thousands of “deaths of despair” each year.

Because Americans tend to view social problems as individual moral failings that can only be solved through punishment, we are predisposed to think that homicides are a far more significant problem than they actually are. But if we are truly concerned about needless deaths, we should focus on institutional instead of personal failure.

This is a moment of nearly unprecedented inequity: the richest ten percent of American households hold 70 percent of the nation’s wealth,the richest one percent of Americans live, on average, 10 to 15 years longer than the poorest one percent (a gap that is increasing even as the homicide rate decreases). According to 2009 data, an estimated 45,000 people die every year because they lack health insurance.

Americans are dying because we collectively choose to fund the punishment apparatus instead of healthcare and material security for all. It’s time to ensure that every member of society has the resources required to live a healthy, fulfilling life.

Jonathan Ben-Menachem is a criminal justice advocate who also writes about issues including policing and the criminalization of poverty.